


this must be the place

by littleleotas



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Custom Shepard (Mass Effect), F/F, Femslash February, Fingerfucking, Past Child Abuse, Shower Sex, a fun time for all, oh the angst, two very broken people jamming their jagged edges together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 15:58:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13767534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: Calixta Shepard discovers to her dismay that she might, after spending her life eschewing personal relationships, have feelings for someone. And that someone is just as broken as she is.





	this must be the place

**Author's Note:**

> In doing (yet) another playthrough with my girl Lix, I got the urge to write how she and Jack got together. I know OC Sheps are fairly divisive so if that's not your thing, this fic isn't for you.

Calixta Shepard felt like a ghost haunting the clinical white halls of the Teltin facility. In her dreams – her nightmares, really – she walked through the halls of her parents’ house in much the same way, looking up in terror at the lofty ceilings as they inched down closer toward her and placing her feet carefully, quietly on the floor, afraid to make a noise. The Teltin facility was supposedly abandoned, so there was no reason to be silently afraid – and yet.

Weeds grew up through the broken floors, sprouting up through old brown blood stains. Rain fell through cracks in the ceilings, the drops echoing endlessly through the halls. Jack’s voice followed, remembering what each room was used for, what horror stories lived in the facility’s walls. The ghosts of Jack’s tortured cellmates appeared before Shepard’s eyes. They reached the fighting pit, and Jack’s explanation of it was drowned out by the screaming spectres of Cerberus’s unwilling test subjects.

The Blood Pack came as a welcome surprise: battle to distract her from the waking nightmare she found herself in. She caught Jack’s eye and nodded, and Jack threw a shockwave, sending the vorcha flying. Shepard followed quickly with a double-projectile throw, silencing the screaming vorcha by flinging them at the wall. Jack laughed sharply.

“Never thought I’d enjoy teamwork,” she said, her voice dripping with malicious mellifluousness.

“Maybe you just needed the right team,” replied Shepard, wiping sweat off her forehead.

Jack looked over at Shepard with a bemused smile. “Maybe.”

They continued through the facility to Jack’s old cell. It hurt, being in that room, and not just for Jack; a strong ache grabbed Shepard’s heart, trying to pull it down through the floor. Her throat ran dry as shapeless images danced at the edge of her vision.

For the moment, however, she could try to ignore the lingering pain that permeated the cell and focus on the very corporeal stranger standing in it.

“I know you,” he said to Jack. “Subject Zero.”

“My name is Jack,” she said, drawing her pistol and pointing it at the man. “How the hell do you know me?”

“We all knew your face, Jack. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn’t kill you. You were the question, and I’m still looking for the answer. I tried to forget this. But a place like this…it doesn’t forget you. It follows you.”

Shepard’s mouth ran dry and she looked warily at Jack. Jack kept her pistol pointed at Aresh, scowling as he spoke.

“I hired these mercs and came back almost a year ago. We’re rebuilding it, piece by piece. I’m going to find out what they knew – how to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I’m restarting the Teltin facility!” A manic gleam filled his eyes as he spoke, an excitement colouring his voice as he ended his monologue.

“We can’t let him start this again,” Shepard said. “Kill him.”

“It’s my decision how to live my life, not yours,” Jack snapped, though she pointed the pistol at Aresh’s head.

“Jack- “

“Killing him won’t clear my head!” She looked up at Shepard, the fire in her eyes making Shepard’s blood run cold. Shepard swallowed hard, watching Jack with as much shock as confusion. They had come to clear the ghosts out of Jack’s head, and here she was, letting one go.

Jack lowered her pistol with a sigh. “Get out of here, Aresh.”

Shepard remained frozen as she watched Aresh run out the door. He would likely die in the blast once they blew up the facility, Shepard told herself. If Jack still wanted that. Shepard wasn’t sure anymore.

Jack walked around her cell, her fingers tracing the desk, the bed, the old blood stain on the wall. “I want to stop coming back here,” she said softly. Shepard looked around the room as it attempted to pull her down, thinking of the room she wanted to stop visiting, too. She wondered if standing in that room again would feel the same as this one.

Jack detonated the bomb from the shuttle as they left Pragia, her eyes locked with Shepard’s as she hit the button. Neither of them had any visible reaction to the explosion. They didn’t so much as look out the window.

They docked in the Normandy’s shuttle bay, and Shepard stood first, dodging Jack’s gaze as she took a step toward the door.

“Hey,” Jack quickly stood and put a hand on Shepard’s shoulder. She looked over her it at Jack.

“Why’d you tell me to kill Aresh?” Jack continued.

Shepard’s gaze lowered, then flicked back up. “I can’t kill my demons. You could kill yours.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned her head forward and walked quickly to the elevator. It was only as she turned around in the elevator as the doors closed that she saw the look on Jack’s face: neither surprise nor concern, but recognition.

-

Part of her was almost exasperated with her subconscious’s predictability. The nightmare returned that night; Shepard had long since stopped counting how many times she’d had it.

Her skin itched, as if allergic to the white taffeta she’d been forced into. She looked at herself in the long, gilded mirror, gritting her teeth and fighting the tears welling in her eyes. _You look like a joke,_ a voice said in her head. She wasn’t sure if it was her voice or her mother’s. _Everyone will laugh at you. Everyone will know you don’t belong here._

The door opened behind her, and she turned around, the changing room fading away as she found herself in the marble hallway of her parents’ house. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in sunlight too bright to look at, and Shepard shielded her eyes from it. She heard her high-heeled steps clack on the floor, the echo seeming to gradually increase in volume instead of growing quieter. She walked toward the end of the hall, where a white door decorated in gold scrollwork stood in wait.

She reached the door, and when she touched the handle, it opened before she could turn it. The room was white, decorated with gold like the door. Dusky pink curtains were drawn back with gold ropes at the windows, letting in more sunlight. Two couches matching the curtains stood unused in front of the similarly unused white fireplace. Her mother stood directly in front of Shepard, her arms crossed and lips pursed.

“You haven’t even tried,” she said.

“Of course not,” Shepard retorted. “I told you I didn’t want this.”

“You don’t know what you want,” her mother waved dismissively, turning away from her.

As she stepped aside, Shepard saw her father approaching like a freight train, and she curled in on herself, holding a hand up as if to protect herself.

“You don’t decide what happens here,” his voice boomed as he approached, his speed not slowing. “You aren’t in charge, I am!”

Shepard took a step backward and her heel caught in her dress. She crumpled to the floor and the menacing tower of her father caught up to her, leaning down, turning red with fury.

“Leave me alone,” her voice cracked pathetically.

He pulled his arm back, and Shepard woke with a start as his fist collided with her cheekbone.

She put her fingers to the impact spot, finding her cheekbone intact but wet with tears. She sat up, moving her legs to the side of the bed, as her breath came shakily, rattling her ribs with each inhale.

-

“You could bury a body in the bags under your eyes,” Jack commented as Shepard trudged down the stairs to the hold.

“Didn’t sleep well.” Shepard stood across from where Jack sat on her cot and leaned against the boxes stacked there.

“I don’t think I thanked you for taking me to Pragia,” Jack said, not meeting Shepard’s eyes. “So…thanks.”

Saying ‘you’re welcome’ seemed too patronising, so Shepard said nothing. Jack didn’t look to her for a response, regardless. She turned away from Shepard, lying flat on her cot and resting a hand on her stomach.

“You don’t know what it’s like, Shepard. To have garbage like that following you around. It marks you in ways you…you don’t expect.” Jack’s voice held a wavering fragility Shepard had never heard from her before. She knew Jack too well to think she was letting her guard down; she knew that sound too well herself to think it had anything to do with her.

“You don’t have a monopoly on pain, you know.”

Jack glanced at Shepard out of the corner of her eye. “Hm. It’s hard to let it go, you know?”

Shepard tilted her head, looking at the floor. The bitter coppery tang of bad memories filled her mouth, and she swallowed hard. “Letting go was easy. It just won’t let go of me.”

“Same thing,” Jack said, shifting her gaze to the ceiling.

“I don’t think so.” She had tried so hard, with every fibre of her being to stop thinking about her past. She focused on work, she focused on books, she focused on anything and everything she could get her hands on just to have something else to think about, and still the nightmares kept her captive. It lived in the back of her head, the undercurrent to all her thoughts; trying to forget it was yet keeping it there, acknowledging its presence by trying to eradicate it. “I want to forget it. I just…can’t.”

Jack’s gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. She didn’t move for a long moment.

Shepard continued. “Maybe having wiped it off the map will help.”

“I’ll let you know,” Jack said. She turned to the wall, and Shepard took the hint.

-

There were days, sometimes even weeks between recurrences of the nightmare. Shepard could convince herself it was healing – until the next one, anyway. The fragile confidence she built in the meantime was utterly shattered each time. Starting from square one, over and over again. She no longer remembered what it was like to not feel tired.

The only reprieve she could find was in the mission. The rush she got in battle flooded her body with a surge of energy she thought might be happiness. The warmth she felt watching Jack at her side, her arm thrown up in a biotic attack – it wasn’t quite graceful, but somehow watching Jack’s body move enthralled her and pushed her into action herself.

Thinking on it afterwards, that feeling scared her. She didn’t know what to do with it. But in the moment, she had no room for fear, so full to the brim with whatever it was that she couldn’t think of anything else. Anything, including her past, and that made her think. Was that what it felt like to be free? Was it the lack of the fear that had haunted her for her entire life that scared her? Did she know how to exist without it?

She meant to ask Jack again if blowing up the Teltin facility had worked, but it kept slipping her mind.

-

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” said Shepard. She immediately screwed her eyes shut upon hearing the tenderness in her tone.

“Something you don’t know, huh?” Jack said with amusement, crossing her arms and quirking an eyebrow at Shepard. “Obvious stuff like what’s up with my ink, or something else just as boring?”

“I’ll bite. What’s with the tattoos?”

“Some are for prisons I’ve been in. Some are for kills. You know, good ones. Some are for things I’ve lost. Those aren’t your business. They’re nobody’s business.”

“What if I wanted them to be my business?” Shepard wasn’t quite smiling, suddenly embarrassingly aware of the naked hopefulness on her face.

Jack laughed darkly, waving a hand dismissively. “You’re not really interested. I’ve been through all this shit before.”

“I could be genuine.”

“Fine. You want in?” She closed the distance between them and held the back of her left forearm up in Shepard’s face, pointing at a woman’s face on her arm. “Her.”

Shepard looked, tilting her head slightly to look at the upside-down face. “Who is she?”

“The first woman I loved.”

Shepard glanced at Jack to see her face set, blank as a clean tablet. She turned her focus back to the tattoo. The woman was beautiful, like a film noir femme fatale. Half her face was hidden in shadow.

“And what happened with her?”

“I let her get too close,” Jack said, lowering her arm. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“You’re really going to push everyone else away just because one person betrayed you?” Shepard’s eyebrows furrowed in frustration.

“Come on, Shepard, you’ve been around,” Jack turned and took a step away from her. Her tone grew short, losing patience. “You’re not stupid. Neither am I.”

“I don’t trust easy,” Shepard said sharply. “That’s not the same as not trusting at all.”

Jack shrugged, half-turning back toward Shepard. “Call it what you want. I know how to protect myself.”

Shepard’s shoulders lowered. She closed her eyes, letting her head fall for a moment before looking back up at Jack. “You really think falling in love is stupid?”

Jack’s chuckle bled into the beginning of her sentence. “Since when are we talking about that? Love’s a lie, it’s not real. So yeah, it is stupid to fall for a lie.”

Shepard nodded, biting the inside of her cheek. She turned away from Jack, heading for the stairs without a word.

“Wait,” Jack said. She took a step toward Shepard. “I told you something. Now it’s your turn.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Jack, not turning around. “What do you want from me?”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Shepard held her gaze for a moment, then turned away again, facing forward with her back to Jack. She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up over her head, keeping her arms inside it in front of her.

“On my shoulder,” she said. She stood still, giving no gesture to indicate the tattoo’s placement. Jack stood equally still for a moment. The ship’s hum, louder here in the sub-deck, seemed to come up through the floor into Shepard’s body, buzzing along with the current of her blood.

Jack took a step toward Shepard and slid the bra strap obscuring the tattoo down her shoulder. She dropped her hand and stood, examining Shepard’s shoulder.

“My family…they weren’t good people. I ran away on my 18th birthday. Haven’t looked back since. I enlisted in the Alliance, and then I went and got this.”

“A moon,” Jack said, not quite as a question but indicative of her lack of understanding.

“A waning moon,” Shepard said. “I wasn’t interested in a new beginning. Just in getting the hell out. Ending on my own terms.”

Shepard turned to face Jack, whose face was full of scrutiny and confusion. “You escaped and…weren’t interested in surviving? What’s the fucking point of that?”

Shepard’s head inclined toward her lifting shoulder as she pulled her bra strap back up. She suddenly felt naked and stupid in front of Jack. She avoided Jack’s penetrative gaze, focusing on the bottom corner of a box to the side.

“I didn’t want anything. Just to get away from them. And once I got that…there wasn’t anything else.”

Jack looked away from Shepard, shifting her weight uncomfortably. Shepard pulled her shirt back on over her head with a slight clearing of her throat.

“What about now?” Jack asked haltingly.

“What about it?” asked Shepard, looking down as she pulled at her shirt, smoothing it into place.

“Do you have anything worth sticking around for now?” Jack crossed her arms over her chest, her movements awkward and stuttered.

Shepard looked up, locking eyes with Jack, seeing her own sadness reflected in Jack’s gaze.

“You tell me,” she said, and quickly turned, leaving the sub-deck before Jack could answer.

-

Shepard avoided visiting Jack for a few days. When her usual rounds of the ship took her to engineering, she hovered uncertainly at the top of the stairs before pushing herself on toward Tali. Jack didn’t come with her on away missions, either. She didn’t regret opening up to Jack, not really – but she felt so foolish that she hoped if she kept her distance, Jack would forget.

Her self-imposed exile ended when she returned from the derelict – or so they’d thought – Collector ship, hours after what she’d thought would be a quick look around and return. She felt the outline of every muscle in her body throbbing with pain, aching with the comedown from the panicked adrenaline surge that had powered her through wave after wave of Collector forces standing between her and the shuttle.

Her vision seemed hazy at the edges and her eyes could barely stay open as she dragged herself into the communal crew showers without a second thought. Her limbs felt heavy and she fumbled around for the shower tap, flinching and grunting as the scalding-hot water hit her skin. She closed her eyes, standing still in the downpour.

“Don’t you have your own shower?”

Shepard opened her eyes slowly and turned to see Jack hanging her towel on a rack to the side. It wasn’t immediately obvious that Jack was topless, and had Shepard been less bone-tired, she might’ve laughed at that realisation.

“Yeah,” she said, blinking as she returned to the moment. “I, uh, forgot. Just…too tired.”

Jack kicked her pants off in a heap off to the side, then turned on the tap next to Shepard.

“So…” Shepard said awkwardly, trying to stare straight at the tile ahead and not at Jack. “How’ve you been?”

Jack laughed that bitter, mirthless laugh again. “Seriously?”

Shepard was silent for a long moment, staring at the tile. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She felt Jack’s scrutinising gaze on her and hunched her shoulders forward as if she could hide.

Jack sighed and looked away, shaking her head. “I can’t figure you out, Shepard.”

Shepard glanced over at Jack, who was now staring at the tile in front of her to avoid Shepard’s gaze. “What do you mean?”

Jack sighed, tilting her head back and looking up at the ceiling. “One minute you’re all up in my face, next you’re avoiding me. Limping around like a wounded animal. Shit, I don’t know.” She ran a hand over her head, as if she was nervously ruffling hair that wasn’t there. “What do you want from me?”

“I-“ Shepard paused, biting her lip. It would be a lie to say she didn’t want anything from Jack, and it would be foolish and embarrassing to tell her what she did want. She settled for a half-truth, not a lie but not the extent of the truth: “I just want to be close to you.”

Jack glared at her, a scowl flitting across her face, disappearing and reappearing as she wrestled with her thoughts. “You’re after something.”

“I’m not,” Shepard said earnestly, meeting Jack’s eyes for the first time in weeks. “I don’t – I don’t trust people. But I know I can trust you. And I haven’t had that for so long, I just-“ Her eyes screwed shut as her face fell, unable to look at Jack’s inscrutable expression a moment longer. “I just want you, Jack.”

Her eyes remained closed until she felt Jack’s hands touching her wrists gently, pushing her arms up over her head and against the cold tile of the wall.

“I’m not going to fall in love with you,” Jack said, her husky voice somehow both inviting and acidic.

“I’m not asking you to love me,” Shepard whispered. Her eyes closed as water ran down her face.

Jack moved one hand to hold both Shepard’s wrists, the other hand moving down her torso, not quite in a caress. Her touch was rough, utterly lacking in tenderness, and Shepard pressed herself into it, arching her back and gyrating her hips into Jack’s hand with all the gentleness Jack’s touch didn’t have. She didn’t think or move consciously, simply reacting to their contact.

Jack closed her eyes and pressed her body against Shepard’s at an angle, exhaling deeply and dragging her fingers down to Shepard’s clit. Shepard’s skin buzzed, her fingers twitching above her head. Jack rubbed her clit in slow, deliberate strokes, and Shepard pressed her head back against the wall, a low grunt sounding in the bottom of her throat.

Shepard’s arm twinged with pain suddenly, and she pulled at Jack’s grip. Jack dropped her hand pinning Shepard’s arms above her head. “I was getting sore, too,” she whispered, quickly re-focusing her attention to her other hand. Shepard’s breath grew shorter as Jack’s fingers moved faster. Shepard moved an arm as if to brace herself on Jack’s shoulder, but her hand hovered briefly before dropping back to the wall.

Jack slipped two fingers inside her, curling them in a ‘come-hither’ gesture, and Shepard’s gasp choked in her throat. She chanced a sideways look, and the corner of Jack’s mouth tugged up in a barely-perceptible smirk. She drew her fingers back, adding another before thrusting in again. Jack moved her head back from Shepard and looked down through heavy-lidded eyes at Shepard panting and writhing against the wall. Shepard closed her eyes, unable to engage with the thought that Jack was seeing her fall apart.

Shepard arched her back, matching her movements to the thrust of Jack’s fingers, begging herself to be happy with this, if this was all she could ask for. Tension built in her stomach and she was sure it was Jack’s doing, though whether it was arousal or anxiety, she couldn’t tell. It was a lack, a desire for something, the need overpowering her and breaking on her like a wave as she came with a drawn-out cry. The heel of her hand was braced on Jack’s shoulder, though she didn’t remember putting it there, and Jack’s open mouth eased into a grin as Shepard looked up at her through eyelashes heavy with water droplets. Jack pulled back from her, turning off the tap next to Shepard and wrapping a towel around herself.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out of the shower room.

The muscle aches Shepard hadn’t noticed were gone returned, and she allowed the surge of pain to bowl her over, dropping to the floor as the shower continued to run.

-

Shepard took Jack on the next mission. An olive branch, of sorts. Their cheery sarcastic banter would have sounded the same to anyone listening to them, but the undercurrent of nervous performance was obvious to them both. It was an overcompensation, a herculean effort to make it look like their interaction was comfortable.

On their return to the Normandy, Shepard tossed her helmet in the armoury but didn’t otherwise change before heading to the sub-deck. Jack hadn’t so much as sat down on her cot, and she turned at the sound of Shepard’s footsteps.

“Something wrong?” she asked as Shepard approached.

Shepard suddenly realised she hadn’t thought through what she wanted to say. “I’m just – I didn’t think – I mean, I didn’t expect –“ she stammered.

“Slow down,” Jack said, holding Shepard’s shoulders.

Shepard twitched nervously at Jack’s touch. She looked up at her, shocked into silence.

“Breathe,” Jack said.

Shepard took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “Okay. The other day, that’s – fuck, I mean, it was _nice_ but that wasn’t what I meant. When I said that I wanted you.”

Jack swallowed a lump in her throat but didn’t respond, her eyes narrowing.

“And I’m afraid I ruined it with you, if you think that’s all I want,” Shepard continued. “I trust you, Jack. With everything I am. And I can’t – I don’t want to lose you.”

“You fucking idiot,” Jack whispered, pushing Shepard against the wall with a kiss. Jack’s lips were pillowy soft, the sweetness of them completely at odds with the rest of her. Shepard hummed into the kiss, hearing the sound before realising it came from her.

“Sorry,” she whispered, barely breaking contact with Jack’s lips.

“Shut up,” Jack said, kissing her with increased desperation.

-

Shepard walked down the marble hallway again, the ominous echo of her heels on the floor surrounding her as she approached the white and gold-scrollworked door. The door opened, and her mother stood in front of her, the familiar look of disapproval on her face.

“You haven’t even tried.”

“Of course not. I told you I didn’t want this.”

“You don’t know what you want.” She turned away from Shepard, and Shepard braced herself for her father’s charge.

“Actually, she does.”

Shepard turned to see Jack standing behind her, leaning in the doorway, arms crossed over her torso. Shepard grinned, turning back to her mother.

“Yeah, I do.”

Jack took a step to stand beside Shepard, looking expectantly at her with a genuine smile on her face. Shepard was briefly shocked into inaction to see Jack smile – not a smirk, not a bitter grin. Jack nodded her head in Shepard’s mother’s direction, and Shepard nodded. Jack turned and threw a shockwave, knocking both Shepard’s mother and her father, idling behind her, into the air. Shepard flung a double-projectile throw at them, and as they hit the wall, Shepard sat up laughing in the dark of her cabin.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at avelakjar!


End file.
